After realizing I will probably only finish Dragon Age Inqusition (as much as I love it) by year 3000, I decided to rotate it with others. Started Riser of the Tomb Raider, second of the rebooted franchise and really enjoying it. Granted some of the voice work is questionable outside of Lara Craft but her desperation is well done, I'm curious about the mystery, I love the relics, done one or two tomb's and the gameplay feels excellent and smooth.

“You, are a rebellious son who abandoned his father. You are a cruel brigand who murdered his lord. How can Heaven and Earth put up with you for long? And unless you die soon, how can you face the sight of men?”

Trying Dynasty Warrior Godseekers which seems to be trying to trying to DT with a bit of DW style, Japanese dialogue but English subtitles. Premise: Zhao Yun and scholarly childhood friend Lei Bin hear of Turbans seeking something buried and seek to stop them. What they find will lead them across the land...

The tutorial section aka the opening doesn't go well, story isn't the best I have ever seen but is alright so far, I think it is more the fights feel so simple and easy at that point that it gets boring. Once one gets to training camp and chance for little non-story battles in Chang An (for levelling up and rewards), I did enjoy the fighting (though still easy to win at moment) more then merging or selling the weapons I got. I only have two units so far and so hopefully will get even better once I get other units and learn how to recruit them. Is stuff tutorial could do better at like how to use skill board effectively and to win the final syncro training required doing stuff I don't believe it had taught me I could do.

As an example of the different tone where DT units would have skills like raid, flank, aid, fire attacks, pit where the unit troops were heavily involved, your attacks on this seem very much "Zhao Yun unleashes such and such" and plows through the troop DW style.

“You, are a rebellious son who abandoned his father. You are a cruel brigand who murdered his lord. How can Heaven and Earth put up with you for long? And unless you die soon, how can you face the sight of men?”

Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiyan Legend, an old Snes RPG (Japan only so I had to import a cart). It was the last of the "card-based" DBZ rpgs and in Japan is infamous for being buggy--apparently the developers included a note about this with the game itself.

The game gives the strong impression of the developers running out of time/money while making a game they put a lot of effort into. Depite this it can be pretty fun and the battle graphics are very impressive for an early SNES game.

Anyone who's familiar with _Witcher 3_ will know _Gwent_, the in-game card game you can play as you explore the game. Well, it was extremely popular (nominated for best game within a game by someone, I forgot who, they sounded important), so much so that CD Projekt Red has made a CCG off of it, a la _Hearthstone_, or really probably more like _The Elder Scrolls: Legends_.

There was two things that struck me about it - one, it was still in closed beta when I first heard about it, so getting in early is always a plus. Second, it has a rather unique mechanic for card games of this type. Rather than a "mana" system where you accumulate the ability to play stronger spells and monsters over time (as I believe _Magic: The Gathering_ first popularized), there is nothing of that type. Instead, players take turns playing single cards at a time, going back and forth. Spells typically search your deck, allow you to play creatures from deck, or damage opponents/buff your creatures. There's no real "battle phase", instead creatures have a strength score that can fluctuate up or down with spells and abilities, and the sum of all your creatures strength is your score for that round. There are three "rounds" to a match, and whoever wins two of the three rounds wins the match.

There is quite a bit of strategy involved in the game, and concepts like choosing when to pass (forfeiting all future actions this round and not playing anymore cards) or whether you want to play X or Y first are legitimately important choices and can make or break games. While still currently in closed beta and not accepting new players, it should be going to open beta relatively soon, at which point there will be a wipe (all players will have their card collections removed, while being given bonus packs, called kegs, based on their level and rank and all that at the time of the wipe; kegs previously purchased with money will also be re-given, so no one's losing money either), and it should be free for anyone to join.

I'm a fan of card games of basically all stripes, so this fits right in my wheelhouse. Although struggling to climb up the MMR ladder, I'm having a good time and hoping for some serious improvement to my game in the coming weeks.

Bush Leagues wrote:I've most recently been playing Gwent: The Witcher Card Game.

Anyone who's familiar with _Witcher 3_ will know _Gwent_, the in-game card game you can play as you explore the game. Well, it was extremely popular (nominated for best game within a game by someone, I forgot who, they sounded important), so much so that CD Projekt Red has made a CCG off of it, a la _Hearthstone_, or really probably more like _The Elder Scrolls: Legends_.

There was two things that struck me about it - one, it was still in closed beta when I first heard about it, so getting in early is always a plus. Second, it has a rather unique mechanic for card games of this type. Rather than a "mana" system where you accumulate the ability to play stronger spells and monsters over time (as I believe _Magic: The Gathering_ first popularized), there is nothing of that type. Instead, players take turns playing single cards at a time, going back and forth. Spells typically search your deck, allow you to play creatures from deck, or damage opponents/buff your creatures. There's no real "battle phase", instead creatures have a strength score that can fluctuate up or down with spells and abilities, and the sum of all your creatures strength is your score for that round. There are three "rounds" to a match, and whoever wins two of the three rounds wins the match.

There is quite a bit of strategy involved in the game, and concepts like choosing when to pass (forfeiting all future actions this round and not playing anymore cards) or whether you want to play X or Y first are legitimately important choices and can make or break games. While still currently in closed beta and not accepting new players, it should be going to open beta relatively soon, at which point there will be a wipe (all players will have their card collections removed, while being given bonus packs, called kegs, based on their level and rank and all that at the time of the wipe; kegs previously purchased with money will also be re-given, so no one's losing money either), and it should be free for anyone to join.

I'm a fan of card games of basically all stripes, so this fits right in my wheelhouse. Although struggling to climb up the MMR ladder, I'm having a good time and hoping for some serious improvement to my game in the coming weeks.

How much does it cost? That is the kinda thing I could be tempted to get involved in/could ruin my life .

Interested in the history behind the novel? Find a list of english language Three Kingdom sources here.

The best thing about most online CCGs like this is that they are free to play. Gwent is the same in this regard.

The only CCG I recall paying money for was for The Elder Scrolls: Legends, because they ran a special promotional offer that was an exceptionally good deal for $5. You can, of course, buy kegs (packs) with money, with the best deal in terms of efficiency being 60 kegs for $70 (USD). That's 300 cards, 60 guaranteed to be rare, epic, or legendary. The best thing about opening packs is that you get 4 cards randomly drawn (typically, but not always, commons), and then your guaranteed rare-or-better card comes up, but you get to pick from three different ones. So if you already have sufficient copies of a particular card, you can get something else instead. This is also great if you happen to draw an epic or legendary - rather than being stuck with whatever you draw, you can pick your favorite of the three you draw. A nice free-to-play strategy is to just play around with whatever, not investing in crafting new cards or anything too much, until you draw your first legendary, and let that guide the first real deck you start to play with.

The open beta should be either running now or beginning in a day or two, so now is a good time to jump in. They've done a really big re-work on everything from closed beta to open beta. Faction passives are now gone, which is good since they were not balanced particularly well. All leader cards for all factions have been re-worked and can be obtained for free by playing through a short series of "challenges" for each one (exceptionally good for new and non-paying players). There are three resources now - ore (used to get packs), scraps (used to craft cards), and meteorite powder, which is new. It's main use is to turn normal versions of cards into their premium version, which only modifies the art on the card. Instead of a static picture, they become animated, which looks very cool. There's a video with some in an old patch here. I've been told (haven't checked) that all cards now have a premium version, so you can theoretically have a deck with nothing but premium cards in them.

In terms of cost, I think remaining F2P is quite viable. You get enough scraps and ore by playing regularly that you can create a serious deck in about a week or so; you can have a top-tier deck only one or two more weeks beyond that, depending on the particular deck. The only downside to this is that it'll all be focused on one deck, so make sure you like playing it!